COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCES IN NON-LINGUISTIC UNIVERSITY DEGREES

Abstract

Author/s Oksana Polyakova Ruzana Galstyan-Sargsyan Universidad Católica de Valenica, Spain ABSTRACT As labour markets continue to change rapidly, the learning environments continue to be unchallenged in the provision of new professionals across the world. This change has compelled the need for students to attain communicative competences in non-linguistic institutions of higher education. In order to address this issue, we propose a novel approach to communicative competences integration into the curriculum development of a specialised foreign language course. For this purpose, we combine students’ needs analysis with a personalised English for specific purposes (ESP) course design that motivates them to learn more about technical and professional environments through a skill-based routing. Additionally, we provide a scale for measuring training outcomes as well as suggest first results from the piloting phase of the teaching experience. The findings of the study highlight usefulness of the customised competence training experience.

Keywords

• higher education
• communicative competences
• second language acquisition
• foreign language teaching